Balmoral Prosecutor To Call Liar

A prosecutor in the trial of five men charged in a failed $600,000 robbery at Balmoral Park Race Track acknowledged Tuesday that one of his witnesses is a liar.

The prosecutor, John Scully, disclosed that the witness had falsely claimed he had killed four people. Another government witness was identified as one of Chicago`s best known jewelry thieves.

Defense lawyers decried the case as a chilling example of ``justice gone berserk.``

Scully, of the organized crime strike force, identified the witnesses as underworld informant James Basile, a convicted bank robber and mob money collector, and Paul ``Peanuts`` Panczko, youngest of three brothers active in crime here since the 1940s.

Basile and Panczko, along with many hours of tape-recorded conversations, are at the heart of the government`s case that the five men on trial conspired to rob the suburban Crete racetrack in 1983, Scully told a jury in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber.

A sixth defendant, Gerald Ciancio, 48, of Palos Heights, has been granted a separate trial later this month.

Ciancio, the gang`s reputed electronics wizard, was removed from the case after he claimed Monday that DiCaro had abducted him at gunpoint from his home on the night of the attempted robbery and forced him to go to Balmoral for the purpose of circumventing the track`s security alarm.

Leinenweber ruled that Ciancio`s unusual defense of coercion was incompatible with that of DiCaro, the gang`s reputed ringleader and a onetime trainer at Balmoral.

In his opening statement to the jury, Scully said the gang hoped to empty the Balmoral safe of $1 million in wagers after sneaking onto the grounds through an abandoned tunnel, forcing their way into the grandstands and cutting open the safe with a torch.

Instead, nothing was taken except the composure and guns of two startled guards. They happened to walk into the heist as it unfolding, and they were disarmed and tied up.

Scully said the thieves decided to call off their closely timed scheme and flee for fear that having taken the two guards captive would bring other guards before the safe could be forced opened.

Scully said Basile had given, then recanted, statements to the FBI claiming to either have killed or to have knowledge of the killings of North Chicago nightclub operator George Christofalos in 1979, the 1980 slayings of mob assassin William Dauber and Dauber`s wife, and the slaying of suspected mob informant William Wright in 1978.

The prosecutor said Basile was going to tell the truth on the witness stand, starting Wednesday, despite having told ``a big lie.``